Want
to change climate?

Is
man responsible for global warming? This has been debated for more than
20 years. And most of the claims say that modern civilization is
responsible for higher atmospheric temperatures caused by man-made
greenhouse gases. The mouthpiece for this claim is the
Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), founded in 1988.

The
main argument of the IPCC is based on carbon dioxide (CO2). Proud to
convey the “consensus” of hundreds of leading scientists from around
the world, this organisation hardly ever hesitated to confirm its belief
in the Assessments Reports[1]
as being correct.

The IPCC Report from 1990 states:

“Emission
resulting from human activities is substantially increasing the
atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide,
methane, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide. These increases
will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in additional
warming of the earth’s surface. The main greenhouse gas, water vapour,
will increase in response to global warming and further enhance it”.[2]

After the end of the 19th
century, the world’s global surface air temperature has increased from
0.3 to 0.6°C, the 1999 Report further states[3].

IPCC’s
CO2 claim proved highly successful. The science on climate change
received many billions of US dollars every year for research, in
addition to meeting the costs of infrastructure, meteorological services,
satellites, ships, etc., all paid from the public funds. The CO2 claim
was the basis on which politics has been made since the Rio de Janeiro
Summit, in 1992, which agreed on the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change of the same year. Only five years later, a treaty on
curbing greenhouse gases was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan. The negotiation
resulted in the agreement that is world-wide known: The ‘Kyoto
Agreement’[4].

The
Russian Federation, an opponent of the treaty for many years, approved
it in late 2004, due to the promises and persuasion of the European
Union. Twenty years of hard lobbying proved to be a great success story
for climate science. The last big industrial country still holding back
its approval of the treaty is the USA. But with Russia on board[5],
the Kyoto Treaty went into force on the 16th of February
2005. The strong belief and conviction of the man-made planetary
climatic catastrophe due to greenhouse gases have created a mighty
political tool within the community of climatologists.

Seeking
funding, having visions, lobbying for one’s own belief is all fair
deal. But what will happen if the greenhouse strategy is found to be
grossly exaggerated or even proves wrong in due course? Could it all
result with global community having lost dozens of years to understand
the mechanism of natural climate system?

Not
everybody is with the IPCC and its findings by “consensus”. While
the mainstream of science and climatologists support it, there are also
voices opposing the IPCC’s conclusions. The most prominent document in
this regard is the “Oregon Petition” from 1998 signed by 17,000
scientists protesting against the Kyoto Agreement. The petition
requested acceptance through the following statement:

“We
urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement
that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, and any other
similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm
the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and
damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There
is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon
dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the
foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere
and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial
scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce
many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments
of the Earth”.[6]

Neither
the IPCC claim nor the Oregon Petition are satisfactory and reflect a
fairly correct assessment and analysis of the Earth’s climate during
the last 150 years. A thorough analysis of climate events and human
activities will show that it is possible to establish considerable links
between the two. After all, the global weather system is based on the
law of physics. That will be explained, demonstrated and discussed in
details throughout this book.

Want
to have a freezing winter? Start a war!

The
following section will provide an initial example. It is one of the
climate change experiments made by man that should have been subject to
a detailed assessment when the experiment started, on the 1st
of September 1939. If the meteorologists of the 1930s failed to
recognise that a climate change is inevitable in case of war at sea, the
post-war climatologists had 60 years to rectify the failure of their
pre-war colleagues.

On
the 14th of February 1940, virtually only hours before the
German Vice-Chancellor and Air Field Marshal Herman Goering denied any
responsibility for the weather with the words: “We did not ask for
ice, snow and cold – A higher power sent them to us”, The New
York Times reported that a record cold gripped the European Nations and
that at least 56 people died from Scandinavia to the Danube, while the
Baltic Sea was frozen. The newspaper informed its readers about the
situation as it follows:

“Europe
suffered tonight in the paralysing grip of the bitterest cold in more
than 100 years”.

“The
cold wave extended from the Arctic fringes of Norway and Finland to the
Netherlands and Hungary”.

“Water
transportation in the Netherlands is completely paralysed. The canals
have been covered with thick ice for more than six weeks. Hundreds of
persons abandoned their homes in the face of crushing ice packs boiling
up from ice-blocked canals, rivers and seas.”

“The
Baltic Sea was frozen over for the first time in many years. Islands
along the coast of the Netherlands and the Baltic were isolated. All day
they sent out SOS calls for coal and foodstuff”.

“In
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, more than 10,000 persons suffered severe
cases of frost-bite. At least five persons froze to death in the three
Baltic countries where temperatures reached 54 degrees below zero
Fahrenheit (-47°C) for the first time in 150 years”.

Only
five and-a-half months earlier, Hitler had started a war in Northern
Europe. Then there was bitter cold, lack of coal, shortages of food,
frozen water pipe lines. Keeping transportation going had become a
nightmare since the cold wave had started during the second week of
January. To boost the morale of the population under these difficult
circumstances, Herman Goering appealed to them in a speech, in Berlin,
on the 15th of February 1940 (NYT, the 16th of
February 1940):

“These
troubles, naturally, take precedence over
yours. They are not a German patent – look at the
nations around you having the same difficulties.”

The
arctic winter in Northern Europe continued for another week. In Sweden,
all cold records were beaten during the days of 19th/20th
of February, with 32 degrees below zero F. (-35.5°C), the coldest since
1805 (NYT, the 23rd of Feb.’40).

Only
a few lines from the outstanding war time reporting of The New York
Times are enough to illustrate the astonishing result of one of the most
captivating climate change experiments.

Since
the 1st of September 1939, thousands of naval vessels were
permanently engaged in war, guarding merchant ships, patrolling sea
areas, and exchanging fire with shore batteries or with other naval
vessels. Thousands of planes flew on bombing, fighting or patrolling
missions every day. Up to 100,000 sea mines were dropped in the
sea of which several thousands exploded. Many thousands depth charges
were thrown over board to destroy enemy submarines. U-boats torpedoed
vessels. Hundreds of ships were sunk in the sea. Some exploded with
extreme force due to their loaded cargo consisting of ammunition or
gasoline.

Baltic
and North Sea waters were churned, mixed and turned upside down as never
before. It was as if someone violently stirred a bowl of soup with a
spoon to cool it quickly. Waters of Northern Europe went to a similar
process which paved the way to the arrival of polar air which
established there for many weeks. The impact on regional winter
conditions should have hardly come as a surprise. The arctic cold
during January and February 1940 was an inevitable result of the war at
sea. It will be discussed in more details at a later stage of this
presentation.

Not
one cold winter alone

If
the war in Europe had ended with the winter 1939/40, a few weeks after
Herman Goering’s speech in mid-February 1940, a description of the
winter 1939/40 as “weather modification” would presumably be correct.
The climate, the same as the statistics of weather data over a longer
period, would hardly have left a trace. Consequently, the
extreme icy January and February 1940 would have ‘gone under’ in the
weather statistics.

The
inner circle of each graph shows a particularly intensive area of
naval war during the indicated period, while the wider circle (dotted
line) indicates the area of a record cold area.

But
the war continued and the war winter of 1940/41 in North Europe came up
with the same conditions as the year before. Same phenomenon occurred
again during the winter of 1941/42 when Germany was at war with Russia
since July 1941. This extreme winter is the most stunning regional
weather modification event. As a result of the war at sea for over six
months, the Baltic became arctic and temperature became colder than that
of the North Pole.

But
WWII is not the only example of weather modification as a result of
fighting at sea. Even the war at sea during World War I (1914-18) left a
similar trail in the weather data records of the British Isles (the
winters of 1916/17 and 1917/18). Fighting in the waters of Great Britain
became very fierce and deadly with newly developed military weapons, sea
mines, submarines, and depth charges. Each of the mentioned five war
winters proved how the war at sea left its clear fingerprint on the
regional winter conditions. One can only wonder why meteorologists at
that time were not capable of seeing a link between altered seawater
conditions due to naval warfare towards the end of a year and arrival of
icy air from the north or the east during the following winter months.

Act
together to change global weather

But
the story on how war at sea determined a climatic change will not end
with some cold regional winters in North Europe. Act globally and you
can globally change the climate for the better or the worst. With Japan’s
attack on Pearl Harbour, on the 7th of December 1941, naval
warfare went global, resulting in a colder temperature phase which
lasted over four decades at a global level. Therefore, the winter
1939/40 was part of an already huge global climatic change event.

After
having mentioned that all cases of war at sea can be directly linked to
climate-relevant events, two further highly interesting climate changes
during the 20th century may have been man-made with a
somewhat “extended link” to the war at sea. There is, in the first
place, the sudden warming at Spitsbergen, in 1918, as a result of the
naval warfare around Britain, and in the North Sea, this having an
impact on the Norwegian Sea and current. The other aspect, the warming
of air temperatures since the mid-1980s, is certainly a remote
possibility but altogether not impossible.

Issues raised so far need
further evidence and explanations, which will come step by step. But to
start with, it will be necessary to give an assessment on how the world
climate would presumably have looked like if man had failed to
industrialize and had remained a small population.

Starting
point will be around 1850 when the so-called Little Ice Age ended.
Climate would presumably have been totally unspectacular without two
World Wars generating two climate changes during the last century,
namely 1918 and 1940. The temperature increase after the 1980s is
perhaps not a change but only a continuation of the rising trend from
1918 to 1939. Indeed, it is one of many interesting questions. But as
man-made changes to climate are a major concern, it could only have
happened with the advent of industrialization one and a half century ago.

[1]
For example 1990, 1995; and the Report 2001 on http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm

[4]
The Kyoto global warming pact, negotiated in Japan's ancient capital
of Kyoto in 1997 and ratified by 140 nations, went into force on the
16th of February 2005, seven years
after it was negotiated, imposing limits on the emissions
of carbon dioxide and other gases scientists blame for rising world
temperatures, melting glaciers and rising oceans;

[5]
With the United States staying out, Russia was the last hope for the
treaty's supporters to get the necessary 55 countries accounting for
at least 55 percent of global emissions in 1990. Russia accounted for
17 percent of emissions, second to the United States;